It seems that the only time anyone ever knocks on my front door now is when they are delivering food. I mean, the majority of my friends don’t know where I live, but the Bangladeshi delivery guys around town know me by face, by name, and know where to find me. Which makes this business of writing reviews about their restaurants and/or takeaways a little bit of a perilous pathway to tread. I don’t want to walk out into the bright sunshine one morning and be surrounded by a whole group of pissed-off looking Asian guys, only to hear, “Now you’re gonna find out what we think of Mr Clever Bollocks around here….”

I jest, of course. But I do tend to factor into my thoughts when I’m mentally preparing a review (read: shovelling food down my neck at a rate of knots and wishing I had ordered a bottle of Cobra: an oversight which happens literally every time) the fact that I see these guys more than the average person does, such is my liking for all things curry. By and large, the guys who work in curry houses are nice, friendly guys, all of whom have a smile for you and are happy to know you’re going to write a review, as they all believe that their food is genuinely the best around.↓ Read the rest of this entry…

SkySports reports that the Celtic players and management are up in arms about the supposedly biased refereeing in their match with Juventus on Wednesday night. The BBC has a piece on it too.

Lennon was furious with the referee. He said: “I thought he was poor. I thought he was very pro-Juventus. I was disappointed with his performance to say the least. They were being fouled at every occasion. The referee is looking at it. They were putting their arms around players, blocking their runs, trying to pull them down.”

Before I head into the main point of this piece, I have to stress now that I think ITV’s Adrian Chiles is an absolute disgrace. Andy Townsend too. After their ridiculous and heavily biased pro-Celtic waffling during and after the match, which included Chiles saying that Lichsteiner is now his “least favourite player in world football”, I honestly do not believe either of them warrant the jobs they currently have. Not that I did before, but this was just confirmation of something I already knew, so to speak. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

I’m not in the habit of doing this kind of thing. I’m not usually the type to throw superlatives about, or be seen to be anything but objective. I’m a Man Utd football fan, but I hate Michael Carrick, I disagree occasionally with Sir Alex Ferguson, and I can watch a Liverpool, Chelsea or Leeds match without feeling the need to use the word “scum” with every breath. Objectivity is something I pride myself on, and being seen to be objective is just as important to me.

Of course, life doesn’t quite work that way, and despite my assurances, I’m certain already that some people will read this piece, will label it as “spam” or something similar, and will either disregard it completely or actually be left with negative thoughts or feelings about either myself, this website, or Giffgaff. Which would be a shame, and one which is inherently avoidable: but I do not subscribe to the idea that popularity should be bought by silence.

For those of you whose contracts are about to expire, or you’re looking for something new, or you’re on Pay-As-You-Go and think you pay a little too much, read on. A few minutes here might just save you a few hundred quid. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

Almost to a man, my non-Saints-supporting friends reacted to Friday morning’s managerial change at Southampton FC with incredulity on their Facebook pages and Twitter feeds (other social-networking sites are available. No, I don’t think that joke’s funny anymore either). Cries of hope were abound that the Saints now went down for their sins. As the only Southampton supporter most of my friends will know, my email and text-message inboxes were full with questions asking what I thought about the news. Even the Managing Director at my place of work made an internal telephone call to me to chew the fat.

Whilst ‘friends’ (inverted commas courtesy of the Facebook era) wishing pain and suffering on my team did hurt me a little, it is somewhat understandable given the circumstances surrounding the “managerial change”, and I must confess to having made corresponding off-the-cuff remarks when other teams have made similar, seemingly odd sackings.

Perhaps predictably, given the presumably correctly-anticipated public outcry over the perceived injustice of Nicola Cortese’s sacking of Nigel Adkins, the Football Club themselves have instead focused quite particularly on his successor, Mauricio Pochettino. The press release confirming the rumours that had begun to circulate the previous night, for example, was titled “New First Team Manager Appointed” and only made reference to “Nigel Adkins” at the end of the first paragraph and in the obligatory (yet always hollow), “thanks-for-your-efforts” line that usually ends such statements. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

During a brief flirtation with studying film at university, I was encouraged to take in several great films which I had not previously had the pleasure of watching. Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket taught me about the futility of war. Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho was a prominent example of how to frame a scene for maximum effect. Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing elucidated the effects of lighting and atmosphere on claustrophobia and historical context.

A Spike Lee fan was born. Not of his acting, since he’s as decidedly weak and monotone in front of the camera as he is creative and visionary behind it. But his writing and directorial skills found a disciple. Do The Right Thing is a fantastic piece of cinema, which enriches your understanding of it every time you watch it.

Internet forums are awash with opinions on the film, on Lee, on Lee’s opinion of the film (which he has clearly said he has neither watched nor has any inclination to do so), and on associated subjects, related to racism, ancestry, and Tarantino’s gratuitous usage of the word “nigger”. This is not, of course, the first time the two have failed to see eye-to-eye on the subject, with Tarantino’s Jackie Brown being another target for Lee’s ire, for precisely the same reason, and I admit to being somewhat ambivalent when it comes to such a contentious issue. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

Author’s Note: This is my dissertation from my undergraduate degree in English from 2010. I’ve had the urge to publish this for a long while, and desperately wanted to edit it before doing so. Now though, I’ve had a change of heart, and as such this is the whole unedited dissertation, which includes more errors than I thought it did at the time. This is a 10,000 word piece on Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World, which I thought about non-stop for a year and then wrote in less than a week (genuinely, despite scaring the shit out of everyone I was in class with by telling them the dissertation was finished by Christmas… I didn’t even start writing it until 6 days before it was due.)

For those of you with an Orwell fixation which matches my own, or a serious case of hitherto incurable insomnia, this might be just what you’re looking for. Either way, after the jump, there will be no more faux-artistic flourishes, no attempt at humour (aside from the chapter titles, which were my one accession to whimsical thought) in this piece. It was the toughest thing I ever wrote, and also the most fun, and here it is, in its entirety. (Rich Wharton, 2012) ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

“I just screwed up. I feel badly because I dropped the ball, plainly and simply. You can make a lot of arguments that it was a very close fight, but that’s immaterial. The fact is, I dropped the ball.” (Burt Clements, admitting he scored the 1st round of Pacquiao/Marquez 1 10-7, because he didn’t realise it should have been scored 10-6 after three knockdowns.)

“There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: thefashionable non-conformist.” (Ayn Rand)

So here we go again. Manny Pacquiao faces off against his Mexican nemesis Juan Manuel Marquez for the fourth time, and second time in three fights. Aside from having some idea now how boxing fans felt watching Sugar Ray Robinson battle it out with Jake LaMotta time and again in the middle of the last century, boxing fans across the world are faced with not only the match-up which now seems all too familiar, but the prospect yet again of having to have tired, circular and largely pointless debates about the outcome of this weekend’s ‘superfight’.

Such is the lot of the Pacquiao and Marquez followers, fans and (this being the 21st century internet generation), haters too. Back and forth goes the verbal and written rhetoric, and for this boxing fan it seems to be a little too reminiscent of the cool kids backing each other up in high-school, or politicians arguing against what they know is right for the sake of status. If it seemed for a while as if Floyd Mayweather was going to be the yardstick by which Manny Pacquiao’s career will be measured by posterity, then the man who assumes the mantle in the face of Floyd’s abstinence is indeed Marquez, the urine-consuming firebrand from Mexico City. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

Having been asked by several people my opinion on the widely-publicized entrance of Andrew Flintoff into professional boxing, I tried for a while yesterday to research as much as I could on his opponent, and the fight generally, a pastime I generally enjoy. And on this occasion, I have to admit to largely coming up blank. In betting terms, you may as well flip a coin, because both guys are unknown quantities.

Suffice it to say though, as much as the information out there isn’t exhaustive, there is still enough that some questions can be answered, and some cannot. Going on the weigh-in, for example, we can come to certain conclusions about the condition and comparison between the pugilists in terms of physical characteristics. More can also be drawn from the videos available on Flintoff training, and also the strange insistence from his team that the fight is shortened by 33%. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

The headlines scream “Ronaldo fed up with being compared to Messi”, but given the way in which Cristiano Ronaldo responded to the questioning he was confronted with subsequent to the Ballon d’Or shortlist being released, it’s a surprise that the headline wasn’t markedly different.

“Messi can win (the Ballon d’Or) but so can Xavi or Iniesta. And we cannot forget Drogba or Falcao. They can also receive the trophy.”

So, for the sake of clarity: that’s three Barcelona players, a man famous for his Stamford Bridge exploits but who is now plying his trade in China, and a striker based on the red side of Madrid but who might yet prove to be the long-term replacement for Drogba at Chelsea. Do you notice anyone, from any club in particular, who happen to have been left out? ↓ Read the rest of this entry…